Mum’s plea over scans

Another Queenstown woman is calling for increased maternity scanning services after being sent to Invercargill and back while she lost her baby.

Filipino Deborah Borja was 12 weeks pregnant when she started bleeding on January 10 this year – she couldn’t see a doctor at Queenstown Medical Centre that day because she arrived on closing time.

Next day, she went back and a doctor told her that while she was “probably having a miscarriage”, Borja couldn’t be scanned because Otago Radiology – the only place pregnant women can be scanned locally – was closed during weekends.

“The doctor advised us to go to Invercargill that day for a scan.”

But at Southland Hospital, she was told a sonographer wouldn’t be working till Monday – however a specialist scanned her to ensure the pregnancy wasn’t ectopic.

Hospital doctors told her she’d have to wait till Monday afternoon to get an official ultrasound done, but Borja and her husband decided to drive back to Queenstown that night to be scanned by Otago Radiology on Monday morning.

Borja believes if Lakes District Hospital had an ultrasound then she wouldn’t have had to go back and forth for answers during a traumatic time.

“It’s really hard to have to travel for three hours in a lot of pain. Why can’t they scan here seven days a week?”
Borja works with Lovitha Karunakaran, who featured in Mountain Scene last week after she lost a fallopian tube and nearly her life when she couldn’t get a scan in Queenstown.